


Crystalline

by OonionChiver



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: An Exploration of Cullen's Inner Darkness Because Of Course, Bad Ass Motherfucker Cullen Rutherford, Blood Kink, Breathplay, Cheating kink, Consent Play, Dark Cullen, Dark Dorian, Dark Evelyn Trevelyan, Dark Romance, Dorian has a nipple ring, Dragon Age: The Macbeth Redux, F/M, Hang On Let Me Just Make This Even Less Appealing, Happy Ending (though maybe not for the world), He Wasn't Feared Throughout Kirkwall For Nothing Guys, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I know right?, If Macbeth Had A Single Fucking Clue, It Took Two Days, It's All Very Romantic I Swear, JESUS CHRIST YOU GUYS, M/M, Murder Kink, No Angst Though!, Rough Sex, Sexual Roleplay, The Threesome that Isn't a Threesome Because Dorian is Obviously Gay But Still, They're All Very Happy Being Crazy, Violence, this is absolute filth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:40:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23682541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OonionChiver/pseuds/OonionChiver
Summary: 'Don’t fuck with me,’ Cullen said before he could stop himself. ‘I’m not one of your playthings.’Evie's smile widened and she leaned forward, forearms resting on her crossed knees. ‘Playthings is an ungenerous term.’'But accurate.’‘Is that how you see them, our followers?''They’re not…’ he shook himself. ‘They’re not followers and they’re not ours.’Green eyes moved over every part of his face. ‘Would you like it if they were?'Or:Evie Trevelyan brings out a beautiful darkness in Cullen that matches her own and with Dorian in tow, the three of them cut a swathe through every obstacle in the way of their ambitions, regardless of what or who those obstacles are.
Relationships: Cullen Rutherford/Female Trevelyan, Dorian Pavus/Cullen Rutherford, Dorian Pavus/Cullen Rutherford/Female Trevelyan
Comments: 22
Kudos: 83





	Crystalline

**Author's Note:**

> Haha holy shit, writing this is what it feels like to be possessed. 
> 
> This is absolutely filthy you guys and as usual, I say that not as a warning but as a warm welcome into the fucking madness that I've wrought.

It was all right there in the way she carried herself. A kind of strength, the inner variety which required no posturing or false words even though she was full to the brim with them if need be. She was strong and _talented_ and even though something inside him rankled at her overall attitude (she could be arrogant, brusque even) he could feel himself being drawn to her as time passed.

To say that Cullen didn’t _watch_ her would have been an outright lie. Whenever she was close, she became the focal point of his attention, she took it without his permission. He watched her walk, watched her interact with the others, with everyone. She spoke with them all and not just those that others would likely deem _important_. She spoke with _everyone_.

Cullen didn’t understand her, not for a long time, but that certainly didn’t negate how he was drawn to her and the root of it, he knew, was in her strength.

Fresh faced, with well-trained arms, trim core and those _thighs_. Cullen always looked away very quickly when his gaze tended in that direction because four out of five times whenever he saw her they were hardly alone, but still. Her thighs in those damned leggings, they just looked so fucking _strong_. He sometimes imagined being between them, how she could wrap herself around him, how it would feel if she _squeezed—_

No. That was bad. Wrong.

Risky.

Evelyn “ _Call-Me-Evie_ _”_ Trevelyan exuded strength of mind, body and soul. Some part of Cullen recognised her as _worthy_ , though he detested that part of himself and worked hard to suppress it. There was a dark hunger underlying the watchfulness of that part, long since locked away beneath vestigial faith and a desire to be more than he’d let himself devolve into in Kirkwall. That part longed for things he would not consider because she was a lady, _high born_ no less and he, though Commander of the Inquisition’s armies, was, in all honesty, a real fucking mess.

He was polite. He was measured and distanced and sometimes, when she pushed - she _very rarely_ pushed him - he found his cheeks darkening with want, praying that she interpret the delicate colour as embarrassment, as shyness.

And at first, maybe she had.

But only at first.

*

It was right there in the way she spoke to him and, he noted with an edge of panic, it was _only_ there when she spoke to him and no one else.

Josephine received careful quiet attention, Leliana devout attention and pragmatism. She was playful with the Iron Bull but Cullen saw how she kept him at a distance, like it was a _test_. She tested people a lot and Cullen often witnessed people _fail_ that test though they wouldn’t know it themselves. Varric was treated like an old friend and her infectious laugh soothed the people of Haven to see their Herald laughing and gesturing enthusiastically with someone. Set them at ease, made her seem relatable. Friendly. Human.

It wasn’t real though.

When she spoke to Cullen - and _only_ Cullen - her voice came out neutral and absent of the many shades with which she was entirely capable of colouring it. When they were alone, it was lower, stronger. None of that false highness and reverence she put on for Solas, nothing deferential or _pure_ like how she could be around Cassandra. Those green eyes latched onto Cullen’s, unblinking and merciless, and refused to let go until he looked away first.

He always looked away first.

 _‘What does our Commander think?’_ she would sometimes ask, addressing him in the third person and _indirectly_ which never failed to rile him slightly, left him irritable with no way of showing it.

Except that one time when he’d gripped the edge of the war table and said, through ground teeth, _‘Why not ask your Commander directly?’_

And something in it, he wasn’t certain what precisely but something had her lips parting, her eyes darkening and the corners of her mouth, a place he fantasised about often, _curling_. She liked it, _liked_ riling him.

That night, when his hand flew over his cock, _finally_ freed from a long day of absolutely fucking refusing to abate, he braced himself against the wall of his tiny room and saw her when he screwed his eyes tight shut. Saw her mouth curl, her green eyes swallowed whole by black and dark desire and he knew then, with absolute, crystal clear certainty, what had elicited such a response.

 _Your Commander_.

He came with a grunt hissed through clenched teeth and it was not a salve, nowhere near.

*

It was patent in the way she flirted with _everyone_. More tests, more seeking, more games. Evie exuded kindness and confidence and humour and she tailored herself to everyone. Cullen watched her befriend even the grouchiest of household workers, make friends with mages, with elves, with cantankerous _Chantry_ folk, for fuck’s sake. The effort she made with the kitchen folk, the stable attendants, that made perfect sense. They knew everything, after all. The secrets, the scandals, the lies, who was fucking who. She liked secrets, he could tell.

The Commander noticed that she _did_ tend to avoid Cole. She didn’t really like Cole and Cullen wholeheartedly shared her sentiment there. It was nothing personal against the boy, just that Cullen didn’t especially care for the way he had an alarming tendency to just _blurt_ out personal, private things like he was observing the design of a shirt he found pleasing.

Evie rarely went near him and he understood why.

Cullen watched her more than was good for him. It began to skew his focus, affect his ability to _be_. Lyrium helped, but only a little. He increased his dose and set about being the best Maker damned Commander he could, determined not to fuck it up.

But she flirted with everyone and it drove him mad. With Blackwall - coy and sweet, high laugh and just a trace of common eagerness in her words. With Bull - forthright and brutish, openly leering at times and deeply suggestive. With Sera, she was chaos and earnest excitement. With Solas, she was serious and respectful, _inquisitive_. That, Cullen acknowledged, was wholly true of her. She wanted to know absolutely everything. Cassandra was showered with praise, with _encouragement_. Vivienne she tussled with, at least _verbally_. Challenges and a hint of grudging respect.

But with Cullen, he failed to perceive any actual _flirting_. He was ready for it, he tried to be ready for her always but he never once received a playful shove, a high, tinkling laugh, a suggestive comment.

She was derisive with him and measured. She drank him in, certainly. The intensity of her stare made him want to look away, but she was like that with everyone.

It took him a while to realise that she flirted with literally anyone she interacted with… except him. He told himself he didn’t know what that meant, but it was a lie.

*

It was surprising how often she listened to, and indeed acted upon, his advice. At the ripe age of twenty-four, Evie Trevelyan was a fully formed woman whose experience in life Cullen could not fathom, such was her mystery and strength of character, but when he made a suggestion, most times she sided with him.

The first few times he held against her. Perceived it as an attempt to sway his favour, to earn his respect perhaps, but any additional attempts were so starkly lacking and she employed none of her other trickery with him that when it happened, time and again, he began to wonder if their interests were truly so aligned or if she just… trusted him. Believed in him, respected him.

‘We go to Therinfall Redoubt,’ she stated decisively. ‘That’s my final word.’

Leliana had been disappointed and by contrast Cullen was… _not_ disappointed. How long had it been since someone, a real live person leading him onward, had _not_ disappointed him? The Chantry, Gregoire, Meredith.

Evie _listened_. She’d considered and then she’d agreed.

She didn’t take him aside afterwards, never capitalised on it and he began to grudgingly respect her for it, despite himself.

*

It was in Skyhold that her tactics shifted into something far more artful, something with longevity in mind and Cullen’s admiration of her became a real, solid thing inside him. He couldn’t _help_ but admire her efforts.

The first thing she did was oust Cole. Varric and Solas were shocked, Vivienne was thrilled. Cullen wondered how she would handle it but his fears were misplaced. She capitalised on it. Engaged in deep and meaningful talks with Solas, spent more time with Varric and explained her heartfelt reasons for doing what she did, even though Cullen knew it was all lies. Life went on.

When Evie wasn’t out making the world a better place, risking her life and her body and those fucking _gorgeous_ thighs, she moved around their new abode and gave everyone exactly what they needed. She had them all worked out, every single one of them. She knew how they liked her and she knew which ones had become wise to her, so she played that to her advantage too. She was dazzling, she was fucking _magic_ and Cullen knew he was verging on obsession.

Late to the party had been one Dorian Pavus, Tevinter mage and Altus extraordinaire. Haven had been coming down around them when Dorian had come knocking.

And though she played him too at first, Cullen observed that Dorian was highly aware of it and seemed to find it pleasing. The two became something resembling _friends_. Cullen could tell that she enjoyed his company and occasionally he felt two pairs of eyes on him as he moved across the courtyard. Dorian Pavus didn’t mind being played so long as he could play _back_ and they fell into a friendship, for lack of a better word.

Cullen wasn’t _jealous_ , not really. Evie still wasn't quite herself with Dorian, perhaps a little too exuberant, too affectionate. Although, he reflected grimly, he didn’t really know her. Maybe with Dorian she _was_ her true self. At any rate, they touched often. Cullen knew which way Dorian’s preferences tended, soldiers’ gossip simply _writhing_ with rumours about the monstrous Tevinter blood mage come to corrupt the sweet, honourable Inquisitor. Dorian was not a threat, and Cullen hated himself for using that word, but he _was_ close to her. As close as anyone had come so far.

And if Cullen was a little jealous of them _both_ sometimes, for the easy way that they touched, for the thoughtless tactility and occasionally outlandish bouts of cuddling, no one had to fucking _know_ , did they?

*

It wasn't that he was drunk (he was) and it wasn’t that he was _alone_ (he had been right up until he wasn’t anymore). It was that he was _low_.

Addiction was a living breathing behemoth inside his chest and not a day went past that he didn’t struggle to wrangle it into submission, sometimes failing entirely. Alcohol didn’t help, but a few hours of being numb would be worth the migraine, or so he told himself.

Drinking alone in his cold, miserable quarters, trying to pretend he was grieving those lost in Haven, when really he was feeling sorry for _himself,_ she came upon him.

‘You’re drunk,’ she observed, standing in his doorway.

Cullen looked up slowly, blinking as if to clear his vision. He shook himself.

‘Evie.’

A flicker of surprise had her brow lifting, but nothing else, or at least he didn’t _think_ it was anything else. Maker, his vision was blurry as all out fuck.

‘No Inquisitor tonight, I see?’

Cullen’s movements were slow and unjustifiably graceful, like he was water suspended by magic. ‘You always ask…’ he cleared his throat. ‘People to call you Evie.’

‘You never have.’

‘No,’ he agreed, looking off to the side and pressing his lips in a thin line, part of him genuinely terrified of what he would say if he didn’t.

‘May I come in?’

He gestured vaguely. It was rude and quite beneath him, such a brusque mannerism. He wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the door click shut, to look back and find her gone, but she was still there. Evie took a seat in front of him, watching him curiously.

‘You don’t often drink,’ she said and fuck, up close she was nothing less than _radiant_. Her golden hair, her dark green eyes. He wanted her bad enough to taste it, even over the alcohol numbing his mouth. ‘Rough night?’

‘Rough decade,’ he heard himself saying entirely without his consent. She didn’t blink or react, just sat there listening and because of it, more words, traitorous, terrible words followed. ‘Why aren’t you off playing with your pet mage?’

Rudeness graduated to pettiness.

 _‘_ Dorian is fucking the Iron Bull,’ she said, nothing in her tone indicating innuendo. It was plain, factual.

Cullen drank some more. ‘You don’t trust him.’

She knew who he meant. ‘I trust very few people, Commander.’

‘For whatever it’s worth,’ he said, managing to only very _slightly_ slur. ‘I share your concerns.’

There was a tiny hint of a smile and… maybe Cullen was too drunk, maybe he was in the fucking Fade, but it seemed genuine.

‘I know you do,’ she said. ‘We agree often. Cut from the same cloth, perhaps.’

He scoffed. ‘Hardly.’

‘Oh?’

It was right on the tip of his tongue, the need to dive headlong into self-deprecation. Point out their differences in station, put himself low and make it clear.

‘You’re the Inquisitor,’ he settled on lamely, glaring down at his desk as if it held all responsibility for everything bad in the world.

‘And you’re my Commander.’

 _Fuck_.

It was subtle. Testing. She never tested him, not that he was aware anyway. Slowly, he looked up to find her gaze, ever watchful but with a hint of poorly concealed curiosity.

‘Don’t fuck with me,’ Cullen said before he could stop himself. ‘I’m not one of your playthings.’

Her smile widened and she leaned forward, forearms resting on her crossed knees. ‘Playthings is an ungenerous term.’

‘But accurate.’

‘Is that how you see them, our followers?’

‘They’re not…’ he shook himself. ‘They’re not _followers_ and they’re not _ours_.’

Green eyes moved over every part of his face. ‘Would you like it if they were?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm. That’s not _quite_ true, is it?’

Cullen straightened. He’d wandered into dangerous territory without even realising it. Suddenly he wished he was stone cold sober, in full control of his senses and his functions. His mouth was wont to betray him.

‘My Lady, I do apologise,’ he said aiming for his most formal tone and landing, instead, on something that sounded almost _afraid_. Something wavering and weak and even more beneath him than his abrupt manner before. ‘I do not believe I am fit for company.’

‘I deem you fit enough.’

‘Well I don’t.’

Evie sat back and something in the intensity of her stare lessened. It was a small mercy and Cullen should have taken it as such, but it felt like a loss and he grieved it even as he chastised himself.

‘If you want me to leave, I will.’

And there, fucking _coward_ that he was. ‘Yes, thank you, my Lady. Please forgive me.’

‘But you don’t, so I’ll stay.’

Cullen blinked and looked at her, tried to reign in his lightly swimming vision. Something inside him, that caged creature in his chest, began to _pace_.

‘You should leave.’

‘Why? Are you dangerous?’

‘Drunk men are always dangerous.’

‘To whom?’

His jaw worked, leaning back in his chair and carefully avoiding her gaze. ‘Themselves.’

‘You’ve stopped taking lyrium,’ she said after a beat. Cullen closed his eyes and a terrible swirl of despair and resignation plummeted through him, all the way down to the bottom of his stomach. That was why she was there, to point out how his performance was suffering, how he was no longer an asset.

‘I have, yes,’ he answered hollowly. ‘How did you…? It’s obvious, then?’

‘Dorian could sense it,’ she answered lightly and added nothing else. So, she wanted him to beg, did she?

Well, fuck that.

‘And what conclusion have you come to, Inquisitor?’

‘I try to avoid conclusions.’

He snorted and rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, so you’re generously giving me the opportunity to resume my addiction, are you? A final chance to go back to the mindless slavery of the Chantry while my brain slowly rots and my memories fade?’

‘No. I’m glad you stopped taking it. I was hoping you would.’

He levied her with what weight he could put into a gaze. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I can tell. You’re a defensive drunk, Commander.’

‘Absent of lyrium, I can barely get through the day without headaches and sudden sickness and those are the _good_ days. There are clusters of days where fever comes for me. A bone deep illness that weakens my heart, addles my mind. Without lyrium, we both know I’m useless to you and you don’t….’ He ground his jaw. ‘You don’t keep useless people around you.’

There was a long beat before she leaned forward once more, green eyes glittering. ‘I take it back. You’re a pity-party drunk.’ Only when he cracked an unwilling smile did she mirror it. ‘I could make you feel good, you know that?’

It was electric, the jolt that sent through him.

‘I could make you feel wonderful,’ she told him as close to _earnest_ as Evie Trevelyan could manage. ‘I would tell you how useful you are to me, how I’d be lost without you. How you’re the best man I know, the strongest, the bravest. The man I look to for support, the one man I trust. I could tell you all those things but you wouldn’t believe them.’

‘Because it’s not true.’

‘Because you’re wary of me, because you watch me as much as I watch you. You see me with others, you see how I am.’

His head was positively spinning now and it had little to do with the alcohol. ‘You don’t watch me.’

‘Really?’

‘You never speak to me for anything less than military matters. You don’t… you talk with everyone but me. You spend time with everyone else.’

‘They require work.’

Cullen laughed bitterly at that, fingers sweeping back and forth across the surface of his desk. ‘Oh, but I don’t? A washed-up ex-Templar on the verge of slow death from lyrium withdrawal?’

‘I think about you often,’ she said, ignoring his comments. ‘I find myself drawn to you.’

They stared at each other for a long, hard moment. ‘I said _don_ _’t_ fuck with me.’

‘If I wanted to fuck with you, I would never have let myself be _seen_ by you. I’d be brave and strong, sweet and _enduring_. I would mirror those traits in yourself that you once prized. I would embody everything you used to believe in. Goodness, kindness, honour. I’d take you aside all the time, we’d play chess. I’d play fair because you wouldn’t respect me for letting you win, oh no. It would all be very… _sweet_ and very hesitant. That’s how I could fuck with you if I wanted.’

‘I wouldn’t fall for it.’

The corner of her mouth curved. ‘That’s what they all think.’

Against his better judgement, Cullen took a long and final slug of the vile alcohol, finishing off the bottle. ‘Why haven’t you then?’

‘Fucked with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t want to, not like that. As I said, the others… they’re all work. Little pieces to be moved around on the war table. Useful if brought to fruition, if managed.’

 _Don_ _’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask._ ‘What am I, then?’

‘Worthy.’

Beneath his rib cage, the creature’s pacing increased, a low snarl forming in its throat, teeth baring slightly. He wanted her more than he knew how to cope with and his inhibitions were dangerously low.

‘I’m not worthy of anything.’

A small flash of annoyance came over her. ‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t what? It’s the truth.’

‘You’re more than this,’ she said and there was nothing encouraging in it, simple statement again. ‘And you know it.’

Oh, but this was _dangerous_ fucking ground to walk.

‘You should leave.’

‘I probably should, but I won’t until you _want_ it.’

‘Evie, I’m… I’m drunk and not in a good place to speak with anyone, let alone you.’

‘I like it when you say my name.’

His fists balled, knuckles bleaching. ‘Please leave.’

‘Do you wish that I’d say _your_ name?’

‘I would _greatly appreciate_ it if you would le—’

‘Or do you wish I’d call you something else?’

Stop. Stop this _now_.

Cullen got to his feet and the room swayed horribly. He kept both hands planted on the desk, necessity rather than bold physical statement. ‘I really must insist, my Lady.’

She made no move to leave. ‘I’m not a lady, don’t call me that. Use my name and I’ll use yours.’

It seemed so simple, like she was offering something akin to _friendship,_ but Cullen knew when he was being drawn into something else, be it willingly or not.

‘I want you to leave.’

Evie stood too, a full head shorter than him even with all those loose, golden curls piled messily, stray tendrils escaping down the back of her neck. Cullen’s mouth watered, _longing_ to tangle his fingers in those curls and wrench her head to the side, expose her neck and _bite hard._ She would let him, he knew.

She would fucking _love_ it.

‘How about I set you at ease?’ she offered. ‘I swear I won’t touch you, I know what you think of me, but I won’t. We can just talk, how’s that?’

‘I don’t think… _that_ of you.’

Evie laughed, her eyes dancing. ‘I’m hardly offended. Fucking them, all those _others_ , it’s just more _work_. It’s not pleasure for me, you understand? It’s morale, it’s… servicing a weapon.’

His jaw was painfully clenched. ‘It’s beneath you.’

‘Sometimes above me, most times behind me. Blackwall likes to look at my face, though. A lot of them don’t.’

‘Stop it, _now_!’

‘Bull did,’ she told him. ‘That one time it happened, he liked to see me wince, to see the pain materialise on my face. A kind of control, I think.’

‘ENOUGH!’ His voice cut through the air, reverberated sharply. She didn’t flinch, didn't even blink. ‘I don’t want to _hear_ about it. Leave.’

Maddeningly, she sat back down. ‘Talk with me a little longer and I will.’

Cullen’s choices were to stumble up the ladder and leave her down there or to take her by the arm and physically throw her out. Either was equally risky; if he went upstairs she might follow him and then… then his resolve would weaken, he could feel it. If he touched her, he was _lost_.

He took his seat again, positively trembling. Cullen swallowed and took a steadying breath.

‘You needn’t whore yourself around in such a way,’ he said at last.

‘Does it displease you, Commander?’

 _Tread carefully, Cullen._ ‘It isn’t necessary. Those who are here, who stand with us do so by choice. They do not require… encouragement.’

‘Sometimes, to get the very best from people, you have to wring it out of them. Like milk from an udder. Start at the base and tighten, _squeeze_ it out.’

He managed to hide his small swallow by clearing his throat. ‘That’s vivid.’

‘You think I’ve come here to do the same to you,’ she suggested. ‘I could. You want me, I want you. It’s already more than enough to go on, but I won’t.’

Quietly, almost _petulantly_ , Cullen asked, ‘Why not?’

Evie spoke as if it was obvious. ‘Because you’re drunk. Because you would regret it. Because it would be… unsporting of me. Unfair.’

‘You don’t care about being fair.’

‘With most people, no.’

He snarled. ‘Stop this _game_. Stop trying to make me feel that I’m different from the others! I see you, Evie. I see how you bend people, how you work them.’

Something clouded behind her eyes. ‘It’s tiring.’

Cullen snorted ungenerously. ‘I fucking _bet_.’

‘I don’t need to work you, though. You and I operate on a level that doesn’t require intervention.’

‘Sometimes, yes,’ he agreed grudgingly.

‘I’ve never experienced that before. It’s rare for me to meet someone and not _want_ to change them. Improve them, work on them. You’re…’ she hesitated, looking off to the side as she searched for the word. ‘Perfect.’

The word burned, caused a dull throb of physical pain that dissipated into pleasure and left Cullen wanting. ‘I’m broken,’ he couldn’t stop himself from saying.

‘You’re _changing_ ,’ she corrected. ‘Freeing yourself from something most wouldn’t even think was an addiction. You seek freedom, regardless of cost. That’s rare.’ She took a small breath. ‘I confess I was pleased when Dorian told me. All ties to the Chantry must be severed that we can move forward. If you’ll let me, I’ll help you.’

He’d never seen her this way. Her voice stripped and genuine, expression plain and unaffected by intuition, she seemed _young._

Against all his better judgement, he asked, ‘How would you help me?’

‘However you need.’

They stared at one another. ‘You can't help me.’

‘I can, if you’ll let me.’

‘There is no method for speeding up—’

‘You can let it all out,’ she said, cutting over him. ‘All that bad, all that _beautiful_ bad inside you. You can paint me with it, with your anger and your frustration and the thing I want most, your darkness.’

Cullen’s mouth turned dry, blood crashing downward and leaving him lightheaded. _‘What_?’

‘Or,’ she said tilting her head. ‘I can take care of you in other ways. I can stroke your hair back, press kisses to your skin. Tie you down and suck all that shit right out of you, like drawing poison from a wound. Make you strong, make you _glow_.’

Viciously, he bit the inside of his cheek. ‘Evie, I need you to leave now.’

‘I want all of it,’ she went on mercilessly. ‘I want every part of you, Cullen.’ The use of his name sent a shiver down his spine, the caged beast within crouching low, hunting gaze fixed upon the beautiful, deadly creature before him. ‘I want _so much_ from this world and you are the only person who can walk beside me while I take it, while _we_ take it. I’ve never met anyone like you. No one has ever seen me like you do. We’re the same,’ she added in a breathless whisper. She leaned back in the chair, pushing herself down a little, almost slouching.

Cullen watched in some kind of suspended disbelief as she slid her hand down into those leggings, between her legs, widening them enough to make it monstrously obvious what she was doing, as if her _hand_ wasn’t enough. Cullen’s entire body felt numb, like he was _dreaming_ somehow and if he wasn’t rock hard before, he fucking well was now.

‘I want you like I’ve never wanted _anything_ ,’ she said, breath shuddering slightly as her wrist moved and her eyelids dipped low like butterfly wings. ‘Do you know how hard it is to stay away from you?’

Cullen lifted his chin and swallowed, his breath coming faster. ‘Tell me.’

She smiled with her eyes, a small sound catching in her throat and breaking softly. ‘When you’re close, all I think of is kissing you, having your tongue in my mouth, your hands in my hair. Pulling tight, making me gasp, making it hurt.’

He kept his palms flat on the desk, absolutely restrained and resolved not to go anywhere near his traitorous, blood filled cock, aching and pleading for contact.

Evie went on. ‘I think about you pushing me down on the table in front of the others, of your teeth on my skin, your hands around my throat tightening enough to make my eyes roll back, make the world turn black.’

His teeth were grinding so hard that it was painful.

‘I want it so much I can barely think straight,’ she told him. ‘After our meeting, sometimes I go back to my room and I have to fuck myself, pretending it’s you. I want your cock in my cunt, I want you inside me _always_. I want to cut your hand and mine, bring them together and bleed into you while you fuck me. I want your blood, I want your come. All that violence, all that _need_.’

Fucking void, he was going to come untouched if she didn’t shut the fuck up, but… he didn't want her to stop, couldn’t imagine a world outside of her touching herself and spewing filth like this that would haunt him for the rest of his days.

‘I imagine what you’d do to me if I slapped you,’ she said, throwing her head back a little, smile wide. ‘How hard would you hit me back? Would you fight me, truly? Would you tie me down and make me beg? Bring the others in and hold meetings while I was naked and chained, covered in my own blood and your spend. Held captive by my Commander.’

Cullen’s fingernails dug into the wood of the desk, jaw locked tight. The way she was moving her hand, he could tell she was fucking herself now, hard and fast and he _despised_ the distance between them. He wanted to be near her, to taste the air around her. Fuck, he wanted to be _inside_ her and not just his cock, he wanted to rip her apart and crawl right into the very core of who she was.

‘But you wouldn’t be able to hold me for long,’ she panted, bringing those green eyes right back to him. ‘I’ll get free, always, and then you’d have to catch me. Maybe I’d lead you on a merry chase, fucking as many others as I could along the way. Would that make you angry? I think it would. I think about what you’d do if you caught me with one of them. Would you kill him right in front of me? Cut him in half with that sword, spatter me with his blood? I know you would, my beautiful, monstrous Commander. Take me there and then among all that blood, teach me a lesson. Hurt me, make me beg for you to stop but I never want you to stop, not really. Hold me down, Cullen. Make me yours, fuck your ownership all the way into me so I feel it for days, forever. Carve your name into me and lick it clean. Make me _yours_.’ Her body was moving with the force of her breathing now. Colour flooded her cheeks, her gaze heavy with lust and desire and he could tell it took every ounce of effort she had not to shut them, she was so fucking close.

He was mesmerised by her, _lost_.

‘Tell me to come,’ she said, not quite begging, not quite instructing.

With what little faculties he had left, Cullen clawed his fingers into the wood of the table, creating splinters. ‘Come for me, Evie.’

His words affected her like they were a real, physical thing. Her body arched like a bow, back rolling as pleasure crashed through her in waves. Her head fell back and he regretted the loss of her expression as she came, silent and yet obscenely _loud_ somehow. Cullen was so turned on he was drunk on it. He was spellbound, entranced with a vicious desire that left him unable to think straight. She was a fucking _witch_ and he was lost to her, to every filthy, dirty thing she’d said to him while fucking herself.

He watched her come down, watched as she dragged her hand out of those leggings and even in the dull light of the candles, he saw her strong, slender fingers glisten. She brought them to her mouth, but he barked, ‘Stop.’

‘Oh?’ she questioned, soft and breathless.

‘Here,’ he managed to say and really, speaking at this point when he was on the verge of passing out from all the blood loss to his head was nothing short of heroic.

Evie Trevelyan got to her feet gracefully, but he noted the slight tremble in her legs. She stood in front of him, at the side of his desk, wet, slick hand raised before her. Her left hand, the one that glowed green and bright and had the potential to save all of Thedas.

Cullen took her by the wrist and the grip was instantly bruising. It wasn't frail, that wrist. She was strong, he’d seen her fight, underhand little bitch when she wanted to be like all rogues. She dealt death with those hands, those wrist bones carved men and women up into pieces.

Her musk filled his head, the smell of her was more than he could resist. Cullen brought her fingers to his mouth and past his lips, onto his tongue. Her flavour burst through his senses, sea salt and honey, slick and plentiful and _fuck_ , he wanted to bury himself in the source of it, lick it out of her, feel those thighs clamp around his head, driving his face deeper and deeper.

Cullen sucked her fingers clean, tongue swiping over callouses and hardened skin from years of holding blades. He had similar ones himself from a sword. They were killers, wielders of bloody death and the taste of her cunt was simply too much for him. He couldn’t come untouched, he _couldn_ _’t_ , the alcohol made it impossible.

Evie’s free hand moved into his hair, fingernails raking over his scalp sharply. He groaned around her fingers, bit down a little and she hissed.

‘Palm your cock for me,’ she breathed. ‘Over the cloth, not under.’

It was like a switch had been flipped, her instruction somehow caused every bit of restraint he felt to disintegrate. There was no reason not to, no reason in the world. His sword hand moved over the uncomfortable, heavy bulge in his trousers, the head straining desperately against the confines of the fabric.

‘Grind your palm over it,’ she whispered. ‘Grind it hard.’

Her fingers tangled in his hair and pulled sharply when he bit down harder but it wasn’t enough, his hand moving over his cock felt almost deliriously good but he wanted more, he wanted everything she’d said and nothing less would ever be enough again.

‘I need…’ he gasped as she withdrew her fingers from between his teeth. ‘I need _more_.’

‘No,’ she insisted. ‘Not while you’re drunk.’

Cullen shoved his chair back, kicking hard against the stone and dragged her down onto his lap in one movement. She made a noise of surprise, but it certainly wasn’t _protest_. Evie swung her leg over him so that she was straddling him. He held her hips in a bruising, painful grip.

Evie braced herself on his shoulders, staring down into his eyes.

‘Don’t you fucking dare regret this,’ she warned and he saw there, despite the remaining alcohol that desire had not quite burned through, how _serious_ she was. It was almost a threat.

He moved her hips back and forth, grinding her over his cock and his eyes crossed slightly. ‘Never,’ he gasped. ‘Fucking _never_.’

It was torturous bliss, still not what he truly wanted, but it was the most she would give and he would respect that. There would be more to come, more opportunities.

‘Kiss me,’ he panted, everything in his lower abdomen tightening and coiling, drawing back like a ballista crank. ‘Fucking _kiss me!_ _’_

He saw the moment she gave in and he revelled to know that her need at least matched his own. It was no gentle thing when their mouths crashed together, positively collided. It was hard and painful, teeth and tongues, lips sliding and moans swallowed back and forth. She ran her hands through his hair, over his face, down the back of his neck and he moved his hands to her thighs, fingers digging into the flesh, into those muscles and he _dragged_ her over his clothed cock, the sensation cresting higher and higher, every rational thought long gone but one, to respect the line she’d drawn because he was drunk. Were it not for that, he would already be balls deep in her, fucking her through his desk.

Evie dragged her sharp teeth over his bottom lip and then bit down. Blood blossomed between them and all that coiling heat inside him _snapped_.

Cullen came with a bitten off roar into her mouth while her tongue lapped over the hot, red mess she’d made. It hit him like a fucking avalanche. Rapture, crushing and brutal took him apart and rent him asunder. Her hips moved over him still, eking out every last droplet of burning, devastating pleasure she could manage.

Cullen came down slowly and dizzily. It took a while for the pleasure to subside, every time she rolled her hips another burst shocked through him until it became unbearable. He forcibly stilled her bottom half and caught his breath while Evie played with his hair and pressed gentle, open mouthed kisses wherever she liked.

‘If you come to me tomorrow,’ she said, voice like cut glass. ‘And attempt to apologise for this, I’ll slit your throat.’

Cullen ran his tongue over the blood from his bottom lip and lifted his eyes to hers, laughing softly. It was breathless and genuine, not because he didn’t believe her _(he really did)_ but because it was ridiculous.

‘Why would I apologise?’ he said and Maker damn it, but he felt so _light_. His headache was _gone_ , aches and pains _gone._ He was resplendent with pleasure, this cunning, beautiful thing in his lap and suddenly, a world of _possibility_ between them.

*

It was the first morning in the weeks since their arrival in Skyhold that Cullen awoke without a migraine splintering through his consciousness. He still felt rough, of course. His bones ached like a fever was distantly approaching, his mouth was so dry he couldn’t swallow and in the pit of his stomach, the need for his morning philter sat like a lump of cold, vibrating stone.

But he felt… different. Hopeful, perhaps.

He washed and dressed quickly and amazingly, didn’t allow himself to obsess about last night. Cullen couldn’t say why, but he just… didn’t _care_. He was sick and tired of caring and last night, with Evie in his lap, with every single fucking thing that had come out of her mouth while she brought herself to completion in front of him… well. He was beyond caring now. If he was _meant_ to shoulder some false sense of regret or stutter out an apology, that was too bad.

Morning drills moved quickly and for once, efficiently. Cullen commanded his men and women in that day’s rotation with confidence and clarity.

The clarity was quite new, wholly refreshing. He hadn’t felt that in a long time. To be able to look at the day ahead of him and plan accordingly, to innovate, to craft ideas.

And if it set his soldiers whispering about his good mood at the end of drills, well then so fucking be it.

*

It was like she had eyes for no one but him when he walked into the meeting that afternoon. Truly, he hadn’t known _quite_ what to expect. A playful glance perhaps, a secret smile or maybe the opposite. Carefully professional avoidance, the use of his title as a barrier between them.

But when he walked into the War Room, to find Leliana, Dorian, Cassandra and Josephine already there with the Inquisitor, Evie’s eyes found his and didn’t let go.

‘Cullen,’ she greeted warmly. ‘You look very well.’

Dorian was watching Cullen rather knowingly, but the Commander didn’t care. He didn’t mind Dorian’s eyes on him, truth be told. They were nice eyes, grey and sharp and full of curious intelligence.

It was a test right from the off, the use of his name. She wanted to see what he’d do in front of the others; in front of Cassandra who had plucked him from notoriety and despair in Kirkwall, in front of Leliana who had once seen him on his knees, rocking back and forth as a very young, very _green_ Templar.

‘Thank you, Evie,’ he answered smoothly, setting down his daily reports on the smaller table beside the wall. ‘I slept well for once and it seems to have had quite the effect.’

 _You_ had quite the effect, was the truth of it and he was a little bemused to find that had he said that, accidentally or not, he wouldn’t entirely regret it, even as Cassandra eyed him suspiciously and Josephine smiled patiently.

Leliana seemed to pick up on it right away, though and Dorian already knew from Evie, Cullen was sure.

He didn’t _care_.

Not caring, he realised, was like setting down a sack of stones.

And anyway, it was all very much worth it when she smiled wide and genuine, or at least as genuine as she was capable, that beautiful, manipulative little bitch.

‘Yes, you look most rested,’ the Tevinter mage agreed pleasantly, his expression carefully neutral. ‘Though it’s back to the _grind_ now, eh?’

She never looked away from him. Cullen’s cheeks didn’t colour, didn’t flood with heat. He held her gaze and levelled it.

‘Quite so, Dorian,’ Cullen said _still_ staring. Now it had to be as obvious as if he’d walked in the room and thrown her down upon the table but there was no part of him that minded, that fretted and worried. She fucked everyone, she messed around with everyone. Why would it matter if the Commander fell prey to her antics? ‘Shall we begin?’

*

It was obvious what was going to happen when the meeting ended, after two long hours of drudgery, and she asked him to stay behind. It was _obvious_ and patent and fucking shameless.

Cullen looked back from the doorway and blinked. ‘Of course.’

Josephine was already on her way back to her desk and Leliana had left first, but Cassandra and Dorian both stared for a moment. Dorian grinned and winked at Cullen, neatly stealing one of the markers from the map (a shiny little castle carved from blue sandstone) and brushed passed Cassandra, who had no such inclination to leave as he did.

‘May I enquire as to…’ she cleared her throat. ‘As to the nature of—?’

‘Did you want something _specific_ , Cassandra?’ Cullen interrupted and there was a _reason_ for that and that reason was that Evie was unbuttoning her top.

The Seeker frowned at his tone and then, when she followed his gaze towards the Herald of Andraste, her eyebrows vanished into her hairline.

‘No,’ she said in a high voice. ‘No, I’m sure it can wait.’

Cullen didn’t think he’d ever seen Cassandra flee in such a manner before but she closed the door behind her which was all Cullen gave a fuck about in the moment.

‘That was a long meeting,’ Evie said, peeling her shirt off once it was unbuttoned. She wore nothing underneath and her bare, beautiful skin was _covered_ in scars. Purple lines mapping out where people had cut and sliced at her, some of them had to be near fatal. Her breasts were round and full and _fucking void_ Cullen wanted to bury his face in them, his mouth watered to press them together and take both dusky pink nipples in his mouth while he fucked her _raw_ but they was still no real match for her face, for the gaze she offered and never broke. She let her hair down from the messy ponytail and ran her fingers through it, the long, golden waves brushing against those very nipples. She ran her fingers down through the loose curls and then over her breasts, fingers trailing very deliberately over the stiff pink peaks. ‘I did very well to restrain myself until it was over, I think.’

The implication that she’d wanted to do this the entire time sent a shiver up Cullen’s spine. He wondered if he should strip off too, but some part of him was too transfixed to consider it. He wanted to watch her, he _always_ wanted to watch her.

‘Yes, you did,’ he said in a low, rough voice that belied the desire thrumming through him. ‘Evie, everyone will know about us now.’

Her smile widened.

‘Is that… what you want?’ he forced himself to ask.

Her fingers dipped into the hem of those ridiculously tight leggings, showing off every curve of her waist and thighs like they were fucking _painted_ on, and she slowly pushed them _down_. ‘Why wouldn’t I want that?’

Cullen’s eyes were rooted to the downward progress and he wasn’t remotely surprised to find she had no smalls on either, _naked_ beneath a thin, flimsy layer of material. He drank in the sight of her abdomen, of every new scar she revealed and then of that mound, that beautiful _V_ with a dusting of golden hair that he wanted to lose himself in forever.

Evie bent double, all the way down to her toes and then she kicked off her boots and came up slowly, hair in loose disarray, cheeks slightly flushed from all the blood run to her head. Her eyes sparkled and her teeth captured her bottom lip.

Naked, scarred and fucking _glorious_ , she waited. She’d asked a question after all, though Cullen’s mind was a little slow on the uptake of things like _words_ and _questions_ when every particle of his being wanted to crash into her and _own_ her for all time.

‘Knowledge of our congress might interfere with your propensity to fuck everyone who’s useful to you,’ he said, pleased that it only trembled _very_ slightly. The table was between them, a vast chasm of space, the only thing that kept him from smashing her into the wall and claiming her deep enough that he would have to clamp his hand over her mouth to contain her screams.

‘Would you like that?’ she asked, pushing her hair over one shoulder. ‘If I was yours only?’

Another test, but this one he was going to fail on purpose. ‘I don’t care if you fuck others,’ he lied.

‘Hmmm,’ she said, tilting her head like a curious puppy instead of the lethal creature she truly was. Cullen noticed there was a scar, a significant one, that began in the centre of her chest and swept right.

‘That one nearly killed you,’ he pointed out. ‘That’s a dagger, a small one.’

She touched it, ran her fingers over it as though it was something precious. ‘Yes,’ she said, letting her eyes flutter shut. ‘This one was special.’

‘It’s a nice collection,’ he commented and began walking slowly around the table, unable to remain where he was a moment longer. Cullen didn’t have to worry about maintaining balance, not when she was stripped naked before him and he was fully dressed, armoured even, sword at his hip, dagger in his boot. He could go to her and it wouldn’t muss the line.

‘Room for more,’ she said lightly, opening her eyes and finding his like the river finds the sea. ‘Room for new ones.’

A dark and terrible hunger pooled in his gut, then. He hadn’t _doubted_ her resolve, not truly, but some small part of him had dreaded that she’d only said those things, those filthy awful things, to fuck with him, to tailor the experience to him and nothing more. He wanted it to be real, _needed_ it to be real and to come from her true self.

He could smell her skin when he said, ‘If you fuck with me like you fuck with the others, I’ll give you the _last_ one.’

This close, in the streaming rays of cold, white sunshine, he could see how her pupils expanded then, how they threatened to swallow all that green.

‘I know you would,’ Evie said. He reached out for her, gloved hand stroking the river of golden curls. ‘That’s why I want you so.’

He crowded her slowly, carefully into the wall. ‘Because I can kill you?’

‘Because you won’t let me control you,’ she answered, absent of smile, absent of anything but honesty. ‘You won’t _let me._ _’_

‘No,’ he agreed, blood flooding through his veins like molten steel, skin burning to press against hers. ‘I will never let you do that.’

‘My Commander,’ she purred as her back hit the wall. He pressed his hands on either side of her head, leaning close enough to kiss but holding himself back. ‘I have no desire to shape you into anything but what you already are.’

Cullen could feel himself getting dizzy, anticipation and desire absolutely ruining him and what remained of his self-control. ‘And what am I?’

Evie’s hand was lightning fast when she slapped him across the face. It echoed like a whip cracking about the room and the pain was _delicious_. Sharp and raw, it raised his hackles, the sting reverberating through him and awakening every deep dark desire that lived within him, ordinarily caged and subdued, but now… so very _awake_.

‘You’re a monster,’ she breathed, red lips curved in a slight smile, chest rising and falling, dark eyes _drowning_ him. ‘Just like me.’

He grabbed her by the upper arms and yanked her away from, and then _into_ , the wall, her body impacting hard. Evie gasped and the smile widened. She wasn’t _soft_ , all her muscles were taut as if preparing for a fight and that was good because she was about to fucking get one.

He removed his gloves, threw them aside and then he removed his armour. Part of him wanted to keep it on but no, he couldn’t miss the opportunity for those fingernails to draw blood from his chest and back, he needed her marks upon him as surely as he needed to paint her in his.

When he was stripped bare to the waist, she went to slap him again but that time he caught her wrist, _hard_. Her jaw slackened, eyelids dropping slightly as she moaned.

‘Bad girl,’ Cullen said in a voice like silk and then he backhanded her. Her head snapped to the side, the blow centred against her jaw. His hand stung from merely administering it so it must have been incredibly painful to _receive_ it. He watched, oddly tentative for a moment especially when he saw blood trickle past that plush bottom lip, down the side of her mouth. She lifted her fingers and looked slowly back at him. Fingertips found the mess and then her tongue came for it, dipping into all the warm, beautiful fluid. He stared at her, mesmerised and transfixed. It bled quickly, the cut. Too much for her to clean up alone.

He pushed her into the wall and his mouth descended upon hers, wide and hungry. It wasn’t a kiss, not really. He _devoured_ her, found the cut and swiped his tongue over it, drinking in all that delicious, metallic _Evie_. Her fingers clawed at his bare shoulders, nails digging in cruel and deep and the pain did nothing but ramp up his desire, his arousal.

‘I’m going to fuck you like you deserve,’ he muttered, drawing back enough to see the pretty red mess around her mouth, the same doubtlessly around his own. They were like animals, like _lions_ nosing into carcasses for the best meat, the juiciest parts. ‘I’m going to make you cry.’

‘You can try,’ she panted and hit him again, harder that time. Fuck, but she was _quick_. He crushed her into the wall and pinned her hands against the stone, trapping her, suffocating her. Their kiss was violent, it sought to hurt and bite and cut. Cullen’s tongue warred against hers, couldn’t get _deep_ enough.

She wrapped one strong leg about his waist and then used the other to climb him fully, trapping him between her thighs and she _squeezed,_ ankles locked at his lower back. He ground himself against her even as she made it nigh impossible. Every thought he’d ever had about her thighs was dead on. She was squeezing the life right out of him, scissoring her legs tighter and tighter. Evie could kill him this way, he realised. She could _snap him in half_.

Cullen released Evie’s wrists and she didn’t need to brace herself on his shoulders, not when she had him about the waist like a fucking _snake_. Somehow, he unhooked his belt, briefly wishing he had the _patience_ to use it on her, and threw it aside, shoving his trousers down only enough to free his desperate, furious cock, the air of the room washing over it like a delicious salve but only a momentary one.

His hand gripped her throat as she moaned his name and he guided his cock to her pussy, against wet, hot folds. He squeezed her throat, fingers digging deep as her eyes rolled slightly and her serpentine hold around his waist became too painful to ignore, bones groaning in protest but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

Cullen pushed inside her with bruising force, she was impossibly tight. Tight from her sustained grip around his middle, all those clever muscles taut and _constricting._ The sensation was enough to drown out the pain she was causing, enough for him to forget _everything_ else but her. Cullen was inside her and it felt like _home_.

The little noises she made, wet, choked off sounds just made him dizzier, more determined to see tears stream down that pretty, fucking _gorgeous_ blood smeared face. He could kill her too. Crush her throat, it would be easy enough, he’d done it before after all, but he knew she’d take him right with her. They had each other in their sights, even while he was inside her.

And he didn’t want to kill her, not really.

Slowly, guardedly he unclenched his fingers from her throat as he began to fuck into all that tightness, all that _heat_. There was no resistance, she was so fucking wet and the sounds of slapping skin twined beautifully with her breathy gasps as he freed her throat and she struggled not to hyperventilate. Shallow, measured breaths so she didn’t pass out, the mark of experience.

Part of him _wanted_ her to pass out, part of him _loved_ the idea of fucking her unconscious but he knew for that, he’d have to fight her for it, have to _take_ it and she wasn’t going to hand over such a prize so easily.

She relaxed her death grip around his waist but only enough that he didn’t think his spine would snap anymore. When she caressed his face, blinking tears down her cheeks, something _monstrous_ twisted inside him. It was more dangerous than all his darkness, than his need to _hurt_. He brought their mouths together in a kiss and that time it _was_ a kiss, no way to deny it. His hand that left pretty purple marks all around her neck wandered down to manhandle her breasts, to pinch and pull on her nipples as he drove himself into her as deep as he could manage.

‘Harder,’ she panted. _‘Please_.’

Cullen lifted her higher to get a better angle and he let himself go completely. Gave into the rhythm, the need to _plough_ her, to drive himself all the way into her body so that no one would ever be able to fuck her without knowing she was _his_ , without knowing who that perfect, tight, _lethal_ pussy belonged to.

And every single time he drove his cock into her, he lost another piece of his control. There wasn’t much to begin with, in all honesty, but he was losing his fucking _mind_ she felt that good. It had never felt this good. Not with Kirkwall whores (false, breathy, high moans and lax, dirty bodies) not with that desperate slutty mage in Kinloch (barely willing, all lies, all to gain his favour, tainted and weak) and not even with the young soldier in Haven three months ago (beautiful boy, tight arse, rough and desperate to feel something) who never _left_ Haven.

Evie Trevelyan wiped out every experience he’d ever had before, nothing felt this good, not even killing. Cullen was fucking _ruined_.

He tasted her tears mingling with her blood in his mouth and she was muttering things again; all manner of words and pictures and ideas for the times that would follow. Maker, but she was _filthy._ She was voicing every single dark thought he’d ever had and some he’d never contemplated before.

And she was so _beautiful_ , body bouncing with every vicious thrust he gifted her, skin glistening with a thin sheen of sweat, cheeks pink and rosy, eyes heavy lidded and locked onto him.

With his free hand he reached for her cunt. His index and middle finger found her clit, rubbing over it, pressing it hard as his fingers moved back and forth, drawing a new, more _desperate_ set of noises from the base of her throat and his pace, if possible, quickened. He was going to flood her, fucking _make her his_.

As if reading his mind, she babbled, ‘Are you going to come inside me?’

‘Yes,’ he growled, white hot pleasure building and building, gathering strength and momentum before it would explode, before it _destroyed_ everything in its path. ‘Fill you with my seed, put a baby in you.’

Evie was so close and when he said that, she tightened around him to the point where it _was_ painful but pain and pleasure were no longer discernible.

‘Do it, do it, fuck!' she pleaded and Cullen lost the very last shred of his self-control, hips driving into her deep enough to nudge the walls of her interior and his hand worked her nub even harder. 

'You can’t get away from me, not now, not ever. You’ll have to kill me to get rid of me and even then, I’ll always be with you, always be _inside_ you. I’m going to _flood_ you with my come.’

She made a sound that was half moan, half scream, tears free-flowinf and he tasted them with his tongue.

‘Make you heavy with my child,’ he panted. ‘Make you fucking _mine_!’

His orgasm was a living thing, a demon, a monster, a dragon. It ripped through him, possessed him completely. His whole body was alight and alive with pleasure, rigid and barely able to endure so much at once. He emptied himself inside her, the imagery unmoving, impossible to ever scrub away. The last few thrusts were the most brutal, shoving her so hard into the wall each time that her whole body rattled with the force. That was when she came, clenching around him so hard it almost wrung another orgasm out of him, milking every last drop of his spend, clenching it deep within herself as she rode out the pleasure, her fingernails drove into his torn skin, making a mess of his back, leaving little half-moon marks that would scar. Maker he _hoped_ they would scar and if they didn't, he would have her carve newer, bigger ones.

Cullen’s thrusts turned shallow and her walls relaxed. He remained inside her even as his cock went soft and she slid her hands up into his hair, drawing his mouth to hers.

It was… almost sweet. There was something trembling there between them. Cullen knew better than to let himself even form the _word_ , not this early on but he could feel the basis of it right there in his chest, burrowing like a parasite right into that most precious organ.

‘My Cullen,’ she keened, their kiss slow and deep and _warm_ , the way normal people kissed he supposed, though likely without so much blood and such plentiful bruises. ‘My beautiful, perfect, _monstrous_ Cullen.’

He closed his eyes and relished the taste of her, the _feel_ of her, of her deadly thighs still wrapped around him, though now relaxed, now sated. He pressed his forehead to hers like they had done last night and he breathed, ‘My Queen.’

*

It was easy after that. Everything was _easy,_ even when it wasn’t. Battles and schemes and endless decisions but they made them together. She was very serious about saving the world, he knew. No point in ruling over an empty continent, was there? Endless difficulties faced them, endless fucking _elements_ of what comprised of leading an Inquisition. It wasn’t that their path became an easy one to walk, far from it, especially after word spread of the incident (the very _loud_ incident _)_ in the War Room.

No, it was that for Cullen, no longer caring made things easy.

When she had the Iron Bull assassinated, it was easy to pass off as an attack from the Qun. Dorian came under no suspicion, even though he was the one who fed his _Kadan_ the poison from his own lips, the cure already within his Tevinter blood. Evie made no effort to appear grieved. Hissrad had been a spy, a man whose loyalty was changeable. There was no room for men like him in her Inquisition.

Sera was the first to leave voluntarily and Cullen was glad of it. The elf had been sweet and kind, it was nice not to have her blood on his hands. He knew Cassandra wanted to leave too, he saw the struggle in the Seeker’s eyes but she was dedicated. The end of the world was more important than her own personal distaste and the same rang true enough for the rest of them, though Vivienne and Dorian seemed quite content to remain.

Dorian began to spend more and more time with them. Cullen didn’t mind, far from it, he liked the man. He liked everything about him, especially those grey eyes.

One night, while the three of them sat around discussing the Imperium and what, in an ideal world, Dorian would do to improve his homeland, the very cradle of all civilisation, Evie made a suggestion.

‘Why don’t you fuck him, Cullen?’ she said while sipping wine, entirely serious.

There had been a kind of detente between them in terms of _other people._ He knew she hadn’t gone near Blackwall again, nor any of the others. She’d been _his_ night after night, morning after morning. Ropes and belts and knives and blood, begging and tears and _talking_ afterwards, talking always about everything. Learning scars, mapping bodies, _honesty_ and… and love. The first time he said it was when he asked after the scar on the lowest part of her abdomen. She explained quietly, with a small frown, that it was from a sword and that sword meant she would never bear fruit, that their games when he flooded her with his come were just that; games. He’d kissed her then and told her how much he loved her and she, her tears in his mouth, told him the same.

And there had been no one else, no mention of it.

Until that night.

Cullen sat back in his high, comfortable chair and slid his gaze to Dorian. The mage was _beautiful_. Bronze skin and pretty hair, hooded eyes and all that intelligence, all that _ambition_. Cullen took him in, found an equal. It was not what he had with Evie. It wasn’t _love,_ but yes, he wanted him.

‘Would you like that?’ Cullen asked him, entirely serious and just a little curious.

‘Maybe,’ Dorian answered, evasive and beguiling in true Tevinter fashion. ‘If she watches.’

It went down that way, with Evie watching, hands behind her head on the wide double bed of her quarters while Cullen drew Dorian in for a deep, almost _possessive_ kiss and drank in the taste of him. Spiced wine and that masculine element, that threat of violence that had Cullen grunting as the mage’s clever, magic wielding hands dipped down his waistline to wrap around the Commander’s cock.

‘Does he taste good, my love?’ she asked and Cullen nodded, kissing the mage deeper, no need to stoop because they were the same height, the same in so many respects. ‘Taste all of him,’ she bade, her voice like a _drug,_ like the best fucking lyrium the world had to offer and the most corrupting too.

Cullen sank to his knees in front of Dorian, working his belt and freeing that beautiful, brown cock, the head shockingly pink and _fuck_ , Cullen wanted more of it. He wrapped his lips around it, mouth closing over the head and Dorian made a beautiful noise above him, fingers tangling in Cullen’s golden hair.

Cullen took him deep, took him as deep as he could, nose buried in a dark thatch of wiry curls at the base, Dorian’s cock choking all the air from him, creating a perfect vacuum of suction and tightness, wet heat and pleasure, just the way Evie did. He mirrored her actions, he _became_ her in a weird sort of way. Sucked Dorian the way she sucked him, gagged on the head when his body panicked slightly and it made him hard, had his trapped cock leaking desperately when Dorian spilled down his throat, hands never once rough, never _painful_ in his hair. Dorian was gentle and that in and of itself was a kind of violence to Cullen. A kind of beautiful, wonderful manipulation because that was Dorian, as manipulative as she was, but being aware of it, being able to _see_ it in plain sight just made Cullen love struck, thanking the Maker and sweet Andraste for being surrounded by such creatures.

He licked Dorian clean, drawing off the half hard cock with an obscene noise and then looked over at Evie. She watched them both with open adoration, love in all her looks.

‘How did he taste?’ she asked, her rough voice the only indication of the effect it had on her.

‘Like sin,’ Cullen answered, pulling Dorian’s trousers all the way down, pulling off those heeled boots and guiding the mage to step out of the material. ‘Like man-made poison in fine wine.’

Cullen’s hand travelled up Dorian’s chest as the mage removed the rest of his clothes, finding a nipple pierced with a small ring. Delighted, Cullen played with it, pulled gently upon it because he already knew that would be their flavour; gentle and sweet and _intense_ , like every kind of poison going down. Like how Bull must have felt when Dorian had kissed him, called him Kadan and told him he loved him while taking that monster cock deep enough to cause real injury, painting the Qunari’s lips with poison.

‘I want _you_ to fuck _me_ ,’ Cullen told Dorian, staring up at the mage. Dorian looked down at him, lips parted, chest rising and falling rapidly and he thought that maybe, by the look in those grey eyes, he was quite a sight to behold.

Dorian glanced over at Evie, not _quite_ asking permission, but something similar, perhaps just checking in with her. Cullen kept his focus on the mage, on the act of kneeling before him in exquisite supplication. He wanted all his power stripped from him, wanting to know how it felt to be _penetrated_ , to have someone inside, to take control the way he did with Evie, though at great cost, always at cost because she _fought_ and made him fight in return for every ounce of it.

‘Get on the bed,’ Dorian said in a husky whisper, that lovely voice rolling up Cullen’s spine. He did as he was told, the Commander of the Inquisition’s armies, Evie Trevelyan’s right-hand man. ‘Strip off for me.’

Cullen’s eyes locked with Evie’s then. The shock of heat and want and _love_ running through him then was like a physical caress, a manifestation of every feeling he had for her, for Dorian, for himself.

She wanted it very much, by the desire in those green eyes, by the set of her jaw. She wanted to see Dorian fuck him and it drove Cullen to absolute madness.

Naked and exposed, he crawled on the bed towards her, that ridiculously massive bed that had already been pushed to the very limits of its strength. He stopped before he passed her knees, hands on either side of her ankles. She was fully dressed, looking for all the world as if someone was reading her a fucking _poem_ and she was greatly enjoying it.

‘Very pretty, Commander,’ Dorian’s voice came from behind, pure velvet and roughened with a throaty kind of lust that made Cullen’s arms shake. ‘All spread out in perfect surrender for us.’

Cullen groaned. The _us_ was a little too much and Evie just smiled, just sat there watching, her eyes moving over the both of them as Dorian’s fingers, slicked with magic, pushed carefully inside Cullen, working him slowly open. It was strange, a weird kind of burn and stretch and though it didn’t quite _hurt_ , it made his heart pound all the harder. He flinched bodily when Dorian’s long, clever fingers, staff-calloused and magical, brushed over something deep within him, jolting pleasure and making stars burst behind his eyes.

‘Oh, that’s good is it?’ Dorian purred against Cullen’s ear, the mages body pressed against him fully now, that beautiful, freshly hard cock nestled against Cullen’s own, which was weeping and strained. ‘I could make you come just from that, you know. Just from _this._ _’_

Dorian brushed over it again and Cullen cried out, heedless of shame, heedless of how it came across because he didn’t have to worry about things like that, not when he was with her, with the both of them.

‘Please,’ he begged, head hanging low as he struggled to breathe evenly. ‘Please fuck me, please.’

‘You want him inside you, my love?’ came her voice through the darkness as Cullen kept his eyes closed.

‘Yes, yes, _please_.’

‘You want his cock so deep inside that you’ll feel him in your throat?’

Cullen whimpered, fingers clawing into the sheets. _‘Please_!’

‘Such a good boy,’ Dorian praised gently, sliding a slicked hand from the crease of Cullen’s arse all the way up his spine, fingers pushing into his hair and then tangling there, slowly dragging Cullen up and back into his lap. ‘Look at her while I fuck you, darling.’

Cullen obeyed as he felt the nudge of that pink _perfect_ head slip past a tight ring of muscle and he winced even as he groaned. It hurt just right. Dorian was slow, lowering Cullen down carefully onto his prick as if the Commander was a puppet, as if his weight was nothing at all and Cullen, sat on Dorian’s cock, his haunches shaking to support him, began to feel just that, _weightless_.

When the mage was fully sheathed inside him, Cullen took a deep, shuddering breath. Dorian’s hands ran up and down his chest soothingly, lips painting a masterpiece of gentle, sucking kisses all along the length of his neck, teeth grazing his ear, dirty, loving whispers filling his head while Cullen stared at Evie, lost but for her.

Dorian was waiting for something, Cullen realised and when her glance broke from his, flickering to Dorian’s and back again, she leaned forward and crawled towards him. Evie knelt before Cullen, taking his face in her hands and planting a gentle, teasing kiss on his lips as Dorian slowly began to fuck him. She slid her tongue in his mouth, brushing against his own as Dorian’s cock began driving in and out of Cullen, smooth and rhythmic, lifting the former-Templar by the hips and lowering him, working the tight clutch of his heat around the Tevinter’s cock.

The sensation was overwhelming, it drove into Cullen, threatened to unmake him it was so fucking intense. It was _painful_ but it wasn’t, not really. It was like mixing blood and water, pain and pleasure were too finely interwoven to be distinguished. It was all just _so much_. Evie kissed him deeper, moaning into him as her hands drifted down his chest towards his rising and falling lower half, worked up and down by the mage.

She wrapped her hands around his cock and broke away to breathe.

‘Beg for it harder,’ she whispered against his lips as he moved, or _was_ moved by the mage fucking him.

‘Please,’ he managed, throat thick and words thin. ‘Please fuck me harder, make me feel it.’

Dorian obliged and his mouth latched onto the side of Cullen’s neck, teeth sinking in slow and gentle, except it couldn’t really be called _gentle_ when it was breaking the skin, when he was lapping at Cullen’s blood. The mage’s hand came to join Evie’s as it worked Cullen’s cock and the Commander looked down in a haze, saw himself being worked by the pair of them, their fingers wound together as they brought him to the edge of consciousness, to the edge of fucking _existence_. It was so different, so very different than anything he’d felt before but it was _them_ and that meant everything.

‘You feel so good,’ Dorian praised, trailing wet lips up the column of Cullen’s throat to bite softly at his ear as Evie moved to the other side of Cullen’s neck and bit at the junction of throat and shoulder, the same as Dorian, only her mark was hard and vicious, claiming and only slightly possessive. ‘Such a good boy for us, aren’t you?’

Cullen felt _possessed,_ caught between them, barely any room to breathe as Dorian filled him to the brim, elicited sounds of begging and need that Cullen hadn’t realised he was capable of making and his woman, his _world_ sank her teeth into his flesh and brought him to absolute fucking ruin. He was being torn apart, wanting to be every bit Dorian’s _good boy_ , wanting to let go but also needing her to bite harder, to rip him apart, to bleed and consume him.

It was only when she kissed him again, his blood on her lips, and Dorian dragged his mouth over Cullen’s jaw that all the pleasure and sheer unbridled _sensation_ combusted, caught fire, fucking exploded. His eyes rolled all the way back, one hand reaching behind to grasp at Dorian’s neck to keep him there, the other tangled in Evie’s hair, locking their mouths together in unholy union; blood and love and the total loss of control.

He was falling into the space between the two of them, a soft dark place where he was formless and shapeless, where he could only exist as the thing inside, accepted and loved and cared for. Cullen could no longer feel his body, sensation transcended into something else, the purest form of what it aimed to be. He was floating and he was _safe_ , locked between them both.

When he came to, he was lying flat on the bed and Dorian was still fucking him. The pace picked up and Cullen’s head was resting on Evie’s thighs while she stroked his hair. Consciousness came slowly as did the return of sensation. He felt… remade, reborn in many ways. Cullen slowly looked up at her and smiled. Evie looked down at him like he was the centre of the world.

Dorian bent to kiss him and the mage’s hips snapped forward as he came inside the Commander. Cullen kissed him back as much as he could, boneless and blissed out as he was. He felt tingly, fucking _wonderful_. Evie stroked his hair while the Tevinter mage kissed him deeply and shuddered through the orgasm Cullen had drawn out of him.

‘Was this how Iron Bull felt?’ Cullen breathed slowly, happily. ‘Before he died?’

Dorian looked down at him with wonder and adoration. ‘No,’ the mage said. ‘He never let me inside him.’ He kissed Cullen again, slow and agonisingly sweet, Evie’s fingers in his hair, nails gently raking his scalp. ‘And I would never try to kill you. You’re not mine to kill, beautiful.’

Dorian looked up at Evie and Cullen saw the pair share a smile. It was intimate, there was love there between them but Cullen felt no hint of a threat. It all felt very… even. Maybe it was just the post-orgasmic haze, the slow recovering from whatever he’d dropped into when he came, but he felt a dizzying swell of affection for them both.

The mage pulled out of Cullen carefully and slowly. The Commander began to roll over onto his stomach, wanting to be closer to Evie. Evie who was still fully clothed, Evie who stared at him like he was everything she’d ever wanted made flesh. Dorian got up and walked over to the wash basin, filling it with ice, melting the ice and then heating the water to wash himself with.

Cullen might have been pleasure wrecked but he was still strong enough to yank Evie underneath him, cage her in with strong arms and take her mouth in a deep, shuddering kiss.

‘Would _you_ kill me?’ he breathed against her lips as she locked her legs around his waist and he dipped his hand into the material of her leggings. She was wet and burningly hot, dripping sweet, sticky nectar. He slid three fingers into her without prelude. She loved that, loved to feel him stretch her.

‘I would never, ever allow anyone _else_ to kill you,’ she said, her breath hitching in her throat as he thumbed her clit, swirling circles around that sensitive, swollen nub. ‘Never.’

He grinned, fucking her harder. ‘But would _you_ kill me?’

Green eyes darkened into the shade he adored. Love and lethality glittered there as she dragged him into emerald depths as surely as any siren.

‘Only if you made me,’ Evie told him, panting as he brought her towards completion, rough and fast and merciless, playing her like an instrument. It wasn't difficult, her arousal was overwhelming, his strong, calloused sword wielding fingers gliding in and out of her as slick, obscene noises filled the air. ‘Only if you asked for it, my love.’

He took her nipple in his mouth, created suction and dragged his teeth over it, biting down just on the right side of _too hard_ and her body heaved once, twice, a third time and then she arched back, spasming, clenching hard around his fingers and he still remembered that first time, sat across from him in his office when she writhed with such glorious exultation. Cullen kissed up her neck, nipping the skin as she slowly came back down.

Behind them, Dorian asked, ‘What’s for dinner?’

*

It was a subtle change after that, but a prevalent one. It rarely happened that way again with Dorian, he wasn’t _often_ there, to earn the truth. When he wasn't accompanying Evie in Ferelden and Orlais, safekeeping warriors of Thedas, he was meeting with envoys, mages he trusted in Tevinter or, more often, mages he _didn_ _’t_ trust. If Dorian didn’t take them out himself, he blackmailed them. Slowly, he was building a foundation.

Sometimes, when it was just the three of them though, it _did_ happen.

The best time, Cullen reflected, was when Dorian had been fucking Cullen and Cullen had been fucking Evie. That was the safest, most _precious_ experience he had ever allowed himself to feel.

But it was rare and Cullen understood. Dorian was respectful of their relationship and even more so of his friendship with Evie.

Evie Trevelyan, strong, beautiful, lethal. All Cullen’s and no one else’s.

Well, in principal at least.

After the first time with Dorian, Cullen already knew she was going to broach it with him. He saw it coming a long way off and he appreciated the fact that she _let_ him see it, that she talked to him about it when she could have just gone and done it.

It wasn’t that Cullen especially minded, he just… didn’t like the thought of her fucking someone else and not being able to kill them. In many respects, he mourned the loss of the Iron Bull for precisely this reason. That would have been _glorious_ , to find that beast ramming into her and then cut him down while he was still hard. She would have loved that and so would Cullen.

‘We need him,’ she said without any preamble. ‘I want the Wardens.’

‘The Wardens are corrupt,’ Cullen said, glancing up from the latest batch of political bullshit he was forced to bring himself up to speed about. Hadn’t the Winter Palace been _enough_?

‘They lack true leadership,’ Evie told him. ‘Blackwall can deliver that, I know it.’

Cullen snorted. ‘Evie, the man won’t even embrace his own _name_. How can he lead anyone if he can't lead himself?’

‘I’ll show him how,’ she said, as delicately as she ever put anything. ‘But I can’t do it without fucking him.’

He sat back, sighing. ‘You _could._ _’_

‘Not if I want to cement his loyalty to me. This shit with Adamant is the perfect opportunity to wipe out the highest levels of Wardens and install a new regime, loyal to us, _under_ us.’

Cullen considered her words carefully, her use of the word _me_ and then _us._ He understood, obviously. Blackwall was infatuated with Evie, many in the castle were. She made no attempt at hiding her relationship with Cullen, quite the contrary, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t go to Blackwall.

‘How long?’ he asked.

‘A week,’ she said, mentally calculating how long it would take to resume her _affair_ with Thom fucking Rainier. ‘Perhaps two.’

‘We leave for Adamant in three.’

‘He’ll be head over heels by then.’

Cullen winced, couldn’t help himself.

‘What?’ she asked, leaning back. Another test perhaps, though there was something almost _worried_ in her expression then.

‘Come to me afterwards,’ he said in a low voice, a voice that dictated rather than requested. ‘Every single time, come to me afterwards. Don’t wash, don’t clean him off you, understand?’

Evie’s worry vanished. ‘I love you,’ she told him and _meant_ it.

Cullen shook his head, smiling fondly. ‘I love you more, my bad, _bad_ girl.’

*

‘It was easy,’ Evie told Cullen as he stripped her off, making her brace against the wall. He kicked her legs apart, nothing gentle or slow about it. He ran his fingers up the bare inside of her thigh and between the folds of her cunt. It was wet and slick. ‘He was _desperate_ for me, especially when I told him I couldn’t keep away from him, that I was in love with him, despite what I felt for you. That sealed it,’ she babbled as he returned to full height and spun her around. Her cheeks were still flushed, sweat cooling on her skin. It had been _minutes_ , not even an hour ago, that he’d fucked her, that bumbling, well intentioned _moron_.

‘Tell me how you said it,’ Cullen demanded, voice trembling. It was… unexpected, the level of jealousy he felt. He shoved his trousers down and her eyes darkened with desire, tongue tracing that plush, perfect bottom lip as she surveyed him, relishing and anticipating what she was about to receive.

‘I said,’ she panted as he grabbed her leg under the knee and lifted it to his side, shoving into her without warning. He glided inside, of course he did, he was the _second_ in less than an hour. ‘That I couldn’t stay away from him any longer.’

Cullen gasped when he bottomed out. ‘Did you cry?’

She tried to claw her hands down his back but he stopped her, grasped them tightly and wrenched them above her head. ‘Of _course_ I cried.’

‘Did he hold you and tell you it couldn’t happen?’

She panted, body slamming into the wall in a terrible, beautiful rhythm. ‘Yes.’

Harder, deeper. ‘What then?’

‘He—agh! Held me in his lap, stroked my hair.’

‘Was he hard?’

‘So fucking hard, he loved to see me cry over him.’

Cullen growled and fucked her into the wall hard enough that he felt it reverberate in her bones. ‘Did you grind on it, you little slut?’

Her mouth split into a wide grin. ‘No. I kissed his cheek first, all slow and regretful.’

‘Then?’

‘We stared at each other, I drew back warily, hesitantly. He tucked my hair behind my ear, like he was my _Daddy._ ’

The word threatened to destroy Cullen. Something terrible was building in his chest, cock moving impossibly fast in the slick wake of another man, a lesser man.

‘Did he kiss you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you cry again?’

‘I cried the whole time,’ Evie panted, pushing up to wrap herself around him like the fucking _snake_ she was. ‘He _loved_ it. Kept telling me we should stop, that it was _wrong_ but he never held me back. Let me sink onto his cock and plead for him to make me remember how it felt to have him inside me.’

Cullen changed the angle, his control in fucking _tatters_. _‘Show_ me.’

Her face changed, her whole expression shifted into something nigh unrecognisable. Something tormented, something _pained_. ‘We shouldn’t,’ she sobbed gently. ‘Blessed Andraste, I know we shouldn’t, Blackwall, but I… I ache without you, I’m _empty_ without you inside me, please. Please let me feel whole, just one more time.’

Cullen slid into it without meaning to, compulsion and drive taking over entirely, a new _game_ forming there and then.

‘We can’t, Maker forgive me, we _can_ _’t_ , Evelyn.’

She clenched hard around him, hips and pussy tight with approval.

‘I need you inside me before I go back to him,’ she cried, for all the world a sweet, desperate creature. ‘I need to know what it feels like to be taken with love just once.’

Cullen grinned despite himself, rhythm faltering lest it all be over much too soon. ‘Does he hurt you then?’ he asked roughly, the way Blackwall might. ‘Does he hurt my little girl?’

Evie turned her face away and cried, two tears falling freshly. ‘Don’t make me lie to you, please.’

Cullen leaned close, made her look at him. ‘If he hurts you, I’ll kill him. I’d do anything for you, for my princess.’

‘You _can’t_!’ she breathed sounding afraid, like she might faint she was so breathless. ‘Cullen is too strong, he… he’s powerful. He has power over me. I can’t get free of him and I… Maker, I won’t have you risk yourself. Not when you’re all that k-keeps me going. Oh, _Daddy_ , you’re all I can think of when he takes me, when he holds me down. Daddy, _please_ , give me what I need. I know it’s bad, I know the Maker will judge us but… please. _Please_ make me feel good!’

Cullen was lost in it when he demanded, ‘Tell me you love me.’

Evie’s orgasm came hard, brought about from his cock alone. She slammed her head back against the wall and cried out, ‘I love you, Daddy. I love you so much!’

Cullen came tumbling over the edge of his own pleasure, adrift in her deception and lies for a few blissful moments, thanking the Maker for her, for his Evie.

When she caught her breath, she began to laugh. It was a beautiful infectious thing, so very real. She found it funny, their game and the one she played with Blackwall. Cullen didn’t laugh but he smiled indulgently, easing out of her as she hopped down from his waist, legs trembling slightly.

‘That was fun,’ she said lightly, still shaking from vestigial laughter, casually wiping away tears shed while lost in the role. 

‘Hmm,’ he burred, deep inside his chest. ‘You’re wicked, Evie. Wickedness incarnate. My bad, beautiful girl.’

‘Did you like being him? Being my _Daddy?_ ’

‘Yes,’ he answered as she leaned up to kiss him sweetly. They needed a bath and that would be fun too, she liked water, she liked it when he held her under. ‘Next time we can play as if you’re killing him.’

*

It took far less time than expected. Testament to her abilities, really. Though Cullen had enjoyed their games when she returned to him of a night - one night in particular where she told of how Blackwall offered to take her away, start fresh and make a family - he was pleased when she said that it was done. Blackwall was hers now and forever and when she assigned him the leader of the Wardens, he would accept it, however grudgingly and he would be her man, _their_ man, however little he knew it.

It was the first chess piece. Cullen took great pains to scrub every inch of her body that night before he tied her down and lashed her with his belt, turned her skin raw and purple and still she begged for more, begged for more than even he would give her because in his heart, he could never truly hurt her, not the way she longed for in the heat of the moment.

Sometimes, she lost herself in the desire. Sometimes she asked for things that Cullen refused, so they just _talked_ about it instead. Spewed dirty words back and forth about the things her darkness dreamed up. How she wanted him to drown her and fuck her while she twitched, how she wanted him to strangle all the life right out of her. She was a _void_ when it came to those things. She left Cullen wonderstruck and more in love than ever, marvelling at her creation, at her sheer fucking existence. They spoke about it and it made her thighs run wet, but it was a line he would never ever cross. He loved her and there simply was no world without her.

And really, deep down, he knew she didn’t _want_ those things, not truly. She wanted someone to play with, to imagine with. To be with her as she let every awful, extreme thing inside her come out to play. He gave her everything he was capable of and she in return. Evie held him afterwards, not immediately reaching for a healing potion, just letting the pain sit between them, blood and bruises and scars on their palms they never healed all the way. They wore those scars like rings, like the bonds of unholy matrimony.

It was their way and it was more than Cullen could ever have dreamed of.

*

It had been well over a year since Cullen Rutherford experienced anything resembling _fear_ , but it came for him anyway.

Evie was brought back from the Hinterlands of all fucking places, unconscious and bearing a wound close to her heart. It was bad, Cullen knew right away.

‘She can’t keep conscious for more than a few minutes,’ Varric said worriedly. ‘It was a group of bandits. Guess one of them got lucky.’

‘Get Solas!’ Cullen barked, touching her face as they laid her down in the infirmary. She was hot and feverish and she didn’t wake. ‘ _NOW!_ _’_

With the help of two others, he removed her armour, the pierced leather where a dagger had sunk between her ribs, scraped that most precious organ and no amount of elfroot had been able to do the trick.

The apostate came into the room quickly, his gaze sweeping over her still form. ‘What has happened?’ he asked.

‘Bandit got her,’ Varric said. ‘Close to her heart we think.’

‘Heal her,’ Cullen growled.

There was a moment where Solas actually hesitated and Cullen saw it all play out. Pretend to heal her to the best of his abilities, but not _quite_ enough to save her. Let it seem that she was beyond saving, that the wound was fatal regardless.

The moment passed and Solas caught sight of Cullen’s stare.

‘Move aside,’ he said briskly to the medics.

Cassandra watched from a little way away and Vivienne began to explain all about the attack, but Cullen was barely listening. Evie’s life was in the hands of a mage he did not trust, a man he barely knew.

‘She is much improved,’ Solas said heavily after well over an hour of complex, draining healing magics. ‘The blades were tipped with poison, I believe. This was no mere bandit attack.’

‘Indeed,’ Vivienne said nodding solemnly.

‘They flanked us,’ Cassandra said, watching as Evie’s breathing eased and so, for the first time, did Cullen’s. ‘It was a small party.’

‘Assassins masquerading as bandits, you think?’ Varric asked.

Cullen didn’t listen to their theories, he took Evie’s hand in his own and held it tight, their twin scars pressing. He closed his eyes and willed his strength into her, prayed to whatever Gods might still consider him theirs to let her live through this, to pull through. They could have him instead, they could have every single person in Thedas instead of her.

The others left, discussing her near death among themselves. Cullen didn’t watch them leave. He held Evie’s hand and he waited.

*

It changed how he saw the world after that.

‘You’re going to have to learn healing magic,’ Cullen told Dorian when the Tevinter mage returned three days later. ‘And you’re going to have to stay with Evie for a while when she’s fighting, at least throughout Adamant.’

Dorian groaned. ‘Healing magic is _notoriously_ mundane and fiddly, I was never especially good with it.’

‘We can’t trust Solas,’ Cullen said, deadly serious. Evie was washing herself in the baths beneath Skyhold while both men sat on the benches, guarding her from anyone who dared intrude while Dorian occasionally reheated the water. Cullen knew it was irrational not to let her out of his sight but he couldn’t help it. The attack had left her weak. His strong, beautiful creature was vulnerable for the time being. ‘I only trust you.’

The mage’s expression softened, grey eyes understanding. He took Cullen’s hand in his own and lifted to press a kiss to the back of it. ‘I’ll start tonight then.’

*

It was Leliana who brought it to them, two days before they set off for Adamant. She studied them both seriously, calculating likely outcomes before she sighed and explained.

‘Vivienne ordered the attack,’ she stated, passing a letter towards them both. ‘She used multiple third parties but I traced it back to her. She paid handsomely, all told.’

‘Did she act alone?’ Cullen asked as Evie examined the letter.

‘As far as I can tell, yes, though she may have received additional funding from a benefactor, as you can see there. It remains unclear except that she ordered it.’

‘Thank you, Leliana,’ Evie said, gracing the Spymaster with a rare, almost genuine smile. ‘Loyalty is hard to come by these days.’

‘I know what you are planning,’ Leliana said simply. ‘It does not trouble me, the world you seek to build. I would only ask that if I’m not to be a part of it, I be given the opportunity to bow out after we have rid the world of Corypheus. I would not wish to stand against you both.’

She’d worked hard to discover Vivienne, Cullen knew that much. Leliana had brought the intelligence about Blackwall, or _Rainier_ , to them and much, much more. She was smart and morally flexible. Cullen had always liked her.

‘Would you _want_ to be a part of it?’

‘I would, yes.’

Evie glanced at Cullen. ‘Well, then, no bowing out for you, Sister Nightingale.’

*

It was a close thing.

‘She’s an asset,’ Cullen said that night while they bathed together, running his fingers carefully down her freshly healed wound. The scar was her newest, the most vivid. ‘And she has no ambition beyond her survival and the survival of the world entire.’

Evie studied him closely, wet hands moving over his face. ‘I trust your judgement,’ she said simply and he knew he’d swayed her, but only just. Evie didn’t like to rely on people outside of their small triangle, people like Leliana. Not when she could make people of her very own, hold them in place with _love_ and _friendship_ and _sex_ and all manner of other things that Evie considered transactional. ‘She can help to hold the South.’

It would be a probationary measure, at least at first, he acknowledged. If Evie didn’t like Leliana’s involvement she would cut her loose. Cullen vaguely hoped that wouldn’t result in bloodshed but couldn’t make himself especially care if it did, not when his woman was in his lap, wrapped all around his cock but not fucking herself, just… seated there with him inside her as they talked business. She liked it this way sometimes, even more so when they were in his quarters, always hopeful that someone would barge inside, heedless of knocking.

‘Tell me again,’ he breathed against her lips, cock twitching inside her as she moved fractionally. ‘What you’re going to do to Vivienne.’

‘Mmm,’ she sighed happily, arms twining around his neck, kissing him gently. ‘I’ll start from the beginning.’

*

It was a long fucking way to Adamant and the journey was rough, but Cullen found time easy to pass when he had Evie and Dorian. His focus was at an all-time high, able to orchestrate strategic and military operations at a high scale, organise soldiers and siege engines and a great, ugly march on an ancient building not made to withstand the monstrosities thought up by men.

Sometimes at night they wandered out into the desert, just Evie and Cullen, leaving behind the lights of camp, the miles of tents and _people_ and noise and together, they played in the dark.

It was dangerous. Creatures hunted at night, all manner of foul beasts but none so deadly as Evie Trevelyan and Cullen Rutherford. They played a version of hide and seek, only the moons above to guide him back to her, that and _instinct_. When he found her hiding inside a small cavern, a collection of rocks, she leapt on his back and the pair began to fight in earnest. They so rarely had a chance to _run_ and _fight_ , it was like stretching out for the first time after living in a cramped place, a cage of expectation and obligation.

Evie won, despite her now almost fully healed injury, which meant she got to choose the game. She held him down in the sand and threatened to snap him in half unless he lay there and did what she said. Cullen pretended to plead for her to stop. This game was a rare one. She made him hard and then she began to fuck him, all the while spilling terrible things from her lips while he begged her to stop, please _stop_ , he was pure, he was _good_ , the Chantry would never forgive him, his fellow Templars would never look at him the same knowing he’d broken his vows of celibacy. Evie drove him ruthlessly into the sand, whispering words that only a demon would, hissing them and causing something resembling real, though deeply faded, fear to curl in his gut as his orgasm loomed large before him.

‘Come for me, Chantry Boy,’ she crowed, her fingernails dragging down his chest beneath the armour, raking over skin like talons. ‘Come inside me like the _sinner_ you are!’

Cullen came with the Maker’s name on his lips and Evie’s burned into his heart.

They walked back in good spirits, nudging into one another playfully as they went. If anyone noticed the state of them when they returned, everyone was more than used to it by now and not a single comment was muttered.

*

It was the worst thing in his whole life, watching the overhang collapse. Evie fell backwards into darkness, into unforgiving gravity and Cullen wasn’t… there. He couldn’t get to her in time. She fell and _fell,_ Dorian, Blackwall and Vivienne with her and Stroud and Hawke not far behind. There was a flash of green before he lost sight of them all and then silence.

There was no calming him down as he tore through rubble, through rock and bodies, through what remained of Adamant to find her but the overhang sat above the Abyssal Reach. He ripped his hands, he broke his fingers trying to shift debris and even when he got there, to the edge of what had collapsed… it was half a mile below. He stared down into that darkness, into the void and realised he’d reached the end of his life. Where she had gone, he would follow too, it was as simple as that.

He was about to pitch forward when someone smacked him over the head with something _hard_ and yanked him back as darkness swallowed him whole.

*

It was out of instinct that Cullen punched the first person he saw who wasn’t Evie. He shrugged off the bandages, leaving him shirtless and bleeding, fingers set poorly in a splint he shook away with a wince.

‘Where is she?’ he growled, low and menacing. Everyone in the medical tent stepped away, eyes wide, faces bloodless. _No_.

He grabbed his sword where it sat against the end of the stretcher and he stalked out into the night, the stench of death and fire filling his senses. He headed back to the centre of the fortress, shrugging off pleas of soldiers, of his own men and women who loved and trusted him and wanted the best for him.

Evie couldn’t be dead. Dorian couldn’t be dead. They were too smart, too clever to die in such a way. He refused to believe it.

His march there revealed fighting ongoing, remaining demons battling the Wardens who, having seen their Inquisitor fighting for them, strategically giving them the chance to save their own _worthless_ skins, had decided to fight in her honour. Cullen cut down as many demons as he could on the way, muddying his sword with ichor and ooze.

He’d barely made it into the outer ring of the fortress when he heard yelling, the kind that flooded him with dangerous hope and _Maker,_ if that cheering was for anything less than her safe return, he would burn the whole fucking world down.

He ran, ignoring the agony, ran through bodies and fire, through gore and soldiers still screaming, trapped beneath rubble strewn like pebbles by a monstrous dragon.

And she was _there_ , bloodied and pale but _there_ , right where the demon had dropped earlier. She was speaking, using her _strong_ voice. Cullen’s heart lightened, hope slamming into him hard when he saw that Dorian was with her too, the Tevinter mage approaching Cullen swiftly. Blackwall stood behind Evie and something in Cullen _snarled_ , wanting to rip the man to shreds for even thinking he had any place at her side.

‘Stop growling,’ Dorian scolded, lifting Cullen’s hand. ‘And stay still, bones are really not my forte.’

He did a shoddy job of healing Cullen’s hand while Evie laid out the horrors and the losses. Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall, lost in the fall. Stroud, great and brave man that he was, facilitated their escape. Vivienne, Knight Enchanter and _friend_ of the Inquisition, sadly lost somewhere in the Fade.

‘Who will lead us?’ a Warden asked, stepping forward.

Evie looked pained, turning to Blackwall and touching his arm. There were tears in her eyes and her mouth was set in a grim line.

‘I will,’ Blackwall said, staunch and valiant. ‘I will lead them.’

Evie held up Blackwall’s arm and declared him the leader of the Grey Wardens. Wardens who were now sworn allies of the Inquisition, theirs to call upon, theirs to protect. The Inquisition would rebuild the Wardens to the height of their glory and beyond.

The applause was deafening but all Cullen could hear was her voice, that particular shade of it so very moving. Dorian nudged Cullen slightly and murmured, ‘Oh, she’s _good_ though, isn’t she?’

Cullen grinned, despite himself and her eyes met his across the soldiers and the Wardens, still holding the arm of a man she’d tricked into love for her. She was resplendent, she was _glory_ personified. She was anything but _good_.

*

It was no simple thing, amassing power while fighting to save the world but the three of them worked for it, wanted it enough to _work_ for it. Alliances were forged, treaties were made and all the while, Evie made friends everywhere she went while carefully culling those she no longer required. Returning to Skyhold without Blackwall and Vivienne was a shock that seemed to awaken a very few to what was happening.

Cassandra leaving triggered a small mass exodus; those soldiers who hadn’t fought in Adamant, who weren’t bound to their Inquisitor out of love and loyalty, they left. They did so formally, which Cullen found almost quaint. Cassandra’s reasons were plainly put. She didn’t want to end up dead for a cause not her own.

The way she looked over her shoulder, some two hundred soldiers following her out of the castle, had Cullen convinced that Cassandra expected an arrow in the back. Evie watched them leave and sighed. It was a bittersweet thing for her. She liked to cut away dead weight, those who weren’t devoted, but she didn’t like letting people just _leave_. She bore Cassandra no ill will but Cullen could tell it was a sad thing for her to watch the Seeker leave intact.

‘The ones who left with her were recruited _by_ her,’ Leliana said. ‘The loss is small but coupled with Adamant, we will need to replenish ranks.’

Cullen smiled. ‘We know.’

*

It was something Cullen had been anticipating for a while now. The Templars were already theirs as much as the Wardens were but they’d been mostly ancillary forces up until then, rebuilding, recruiting and remaking themselves.

Evie and Cullen dissolved the Order of the Templars overnight. They met with a man named Raleigh Samson, with several men and women who commanded a great deal of respect from the soldiers, freshly cut and let loose in the wind. It was what Cullen had always envisioned for the Order. No leash, no Chantry, no _faith_ but that in those who would lead them onward, who would fight beside them.

Before the Chantry, weak and crippled, had even caught wind of what was happening to their muzzled pets, Evie declared a new Order – The Order of the Inquisition - and sent word throughout every camp and stronghold of Templars, offering them the opportunity to join of their own free will, unshackled to the Chantry, beholden instead to the Inquisition. To serve under the man who was a whispered legend of defiance against the Chantry and the woman who bled right alongside those who fought for her, the woman who would save the world.

The offer was attractive for other reasons too, obviously. Armies were not amassed with honour and glory alone. The stipend was generous, the status increased. Lyrium was optional, doctrine was to be shed. Loyalty was to the Inquisitor and it would be absolute.

Within a month, their forces had quadrupled. Cullen celebrated by bringing Evie a scroll containing Cassandra’s location. She looked at it and then up at him with an adoring smile, like he’d gifted her a ring.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered and kissed him then. ‘But I don’t need it.’

He didn’t ask if it was because she no longer _wanted_ to kill Cassandra or because she already had. It didn’t matter to him.

*

It was a massive thing, the Order of the Inquisition, by the time they crushed the Arbor Wilds. Though assistance was offered by Orlais and Ferelden, it wasn’t required. Corypheus’s armies were small by comparison and Cullen took no small pleasure in cutting down the traitorous mages sworn to his cause out of fear, out of _desperation_. Samson led the infantry and Cullen commanded the siege engines. Evie, Dorian, Varric and Solas went into the Temple with Morrigan, a bitch Cullen _despised_ but remained polite enough towards, despite how she looked at him, how she looked at his _Evie_.

Evie, Dorian, Solas and Varric returned, traipsing through the swampland created by trebuchets and other machines of war.

‘My love,’ Cullen greeted, taking her in his arms and kissing her deeply. He felt her all over, up and down for injuries, but found only shallow cuts and bruises. He looked back behind her. ‘Morrigan?’

‘She drank of the Well,’ Solas explained, not meeting Cullen’s eye. ‘But it… must have become too much for her. Her heart gave out shortly after. The wisdom of the Well is lost for all time.’

Evie smiled and nuzzled Cullen’s nose. She was pleased, contented and playful. They had never needed the Well, they had the biggest army ever amassed in the South. They had allegiances in Tevinter. They had all that they would ever need once that scabby red thing was finally destroyed. Cullen spun her around like a princess, knowing she’d killed Morrigan especially for him. His blood was on fire, his heart thundering, adrenaline pounding through him from the easily won battle.

‘Losses?’ Varric asked while they kissed.

‘Minimal,’ Cullen answered as he grabbed Dorian by the tunic and dragged him towards the Command Tent, Evie Trevelyan’s thighs wrapped all about him.

*

It was the last, final push.

‘You’re not going alone,’ Cullen said and what he really meant was _you_ _’re not going without me_. They stood on opposite sides of the War Table, just the two of them. Cullen leaned on it; heavy, sturdy thing that it was. He’d lost count of how many times they fucked on it, sending the pieces scattered thoughtlessly to the ground time and again.

‘Part of me wants to keep you and Dorian safe,’ Evie said, looking down. ‘If I die, you two can carry on what we’ve started.’

That made him angry enough that his vision reddened at the edges.

‘How dare you?’ he spat. ‘Don’t you even think of leaving me alone in this world!’

She closed her eyes. ‘The Order is still in the Wilds. We have minimal forces here. I have to go. I can’t risk losing you and you _wouldn’t_ be alone,’ she added quietly.

Cullen’s lips parted, something violent and angry twisting in his chest then because oh, that was _low_. Dorian meant so much to Cullen, he _loved_ him. That didn’t negate the thought of losing her. Nothing could.

‘If you want to stop me coming with you, kill me,’ he stated, voice trembling. ‘Here’s the moment you’ve waited for. I’m asking for it, asking to die rather than stay behind like a fucking coward! You’ll have to kill me to stop me, Evie. You know it.’

And when she opened her eyes, there were tears there, glistening above the green. It hurt him to see it, it brought all kinds of monstrous things swirling around in his throat, packing his chest with wool. Her jaw worked and she wiped her eyes briskly.

‘There has never been a thing in this world that I’ve placed higher than myself in terms of priorities,’ she said bluntly. ‘Until you.’

He slammed his eyes shut. ‘Don’t you _dare._ _’_

‘I love you more than I love myself. I _cannot_ risk seeing you fall before me.’

‘You’ll risk it because that’s what we _do!_ ’ he roared, driving his fist down into the table hard enough to crack the wood, send a fracture through it, beneath the maps, toppling the pieces. What did they matter anymore when it came down to Evie versus a living _God_? ‘Kill me, Evie. Kill me rather than leave me behind.’

She moved away from the table, shaking her head but he gave chase, shoving around the great, bulky thing to get to her. When Cullen grabbed her, Evie swung around and punched him in the face.

‘Do you think I want this?’ she yelled, eyes flashing. ‘I hate this fucking thing, the _curse_ on my hand. Every day it drags me lower and lower, drains me a little more. I want it _gone_ , I want rid of it and I want this war to be over with so we can build our own Empire, so we can make good on every single thing we planned!’

‘Then let me come with you!’

‘I _cannot_ lose you!’

‘You will _never_ lose me!’

They stood before each other, panting and shaking. Her hand crackled again and she clutched her wrist wincing in pain. He caught hold of her before she fell. A sly, vile reminder of what was waiting for her over the hill, breach hanging low above it.

‘If we’re not together then what’s the point?’ he whispered, pressing his lips to her forehead. ‘We started this together, we finish it together. My love, my wild creature, my Evie _._ _’_

He could see the precise moment her resolve broke.

‘Together then,’ she said, the green of the sky reflected in her eyes. ‘Trust me to be strong as I will trust you.’

It was their way, always had been. Taken to monstrous extremes, but that _trust_ was innate.

Cullen closed his eyes and held her tight. ‘Always.’

*

It was no small thing, though it would be written as such.

Varric, Dorian and Solas fought alongside them while Cullen and Evie took on the Elder One, took down his dragon and then… it was _done_.

There had been close calls; times when Cullen was sure she was dead, shaking her viciously on the ground when that red, crackling magic knocked her unconscious from the sheer force of it. She always got up, always fought back. They fought with everything they had, always did.

The moment was Evie’s.

Cullen, kneeling upon shuddering rocks, suspended high in the sky, watched as she quipped lightly and then crushed that thing’s jaw to jelly before sending him into the Fade.

She was bloody and torn, broken bones and internal bleeding and Cullen, truth be told, was worse off than even that. Dorian healed her first at Cullen’s insistence since Solas had apparently taken it upon himself to wander the fuck off. Dorian’s magic was enough to keep them from death and little else. Varric had survived, one of the few remaining members of the Inner Circle. Leliana who had a chance to prove herself later and Josephine, whose neutrality and silence had kept her alive long enough go depart on her own terms without incurring any ill will from any of the three.

Dorian skidded to heal Cullen, whose stomach _was_ admittedly open to the elements and Evie came rushing over too, furious and pale.

‘What did I fucking _tell_ you?’ she spat, pressing her hands over the wound.

 _‘Don’t you dare die before me_ ,’ Cullen answered dutifully as Dorian’s basic magic sewed him shut, sealed his skin and what damage lay within. She poured potion after potion down his throat until the pain reduced to a white-hot _stinging_ sensation. Dorian kissed him then, shaky with relief and Cullen clutched at him, at the both of them.

There wasn’t time for anything else. Rocks were falling from the sky. The two he loved helped him and Varric led the way.

*

It was a week before Cullen could fuck her through the mattress of their bed, a week before he could make her scream his name without ripping his stitches. That didn’t mean he’d spent the week _avoiding_ such strenuous activities. Far from it, especially not when they had Dorian to roll his eyes and lovingly clean up the mess, sometimes with his tongue.

It was a rainy day when Cullen told Dorian he loved him and it happened while Dorian was healing the wound on his abdomen yet again.

‘I love you, Dorian,’ he said simply. Things were often simple between them. Simple and sweet and intense, all their darkness in tenderness, in quiet devastation.

Dorian’s eyes widened and he stared at Cullen for a long moment before he shook himself and swallowed, speaking carefully when he said, ‘I don’t tend to mire myself down with such sentiments.’

Cullen stroked his hair back with one hand, the other propping him up on the bed. He waited, knowing the mage better than he knew himself.

‘ _But_ ,’ Dorian said slowly. ‘As sentiment goes, you should know that it’s… shared.’

They kissed then, a tiny moment to themselves and even though she wasn’t there, she didn’t need to be. Cullen felt her, he always felt her.

He pulled Dorian into his lap and the mage laughed.

‘Now how are we going to travel to Tevinter if you keep ripping those stitches, amatus, hmm?’

‘Dumb Southern luck?’ Cullen ventured, nosing under Dorian’s jaw and nipping the flesh he found there.

Dorian was deeply fond when he said, ‘Sounds about fucking right.’

*

It wasn't the big things in life that mattered, Cullen reflected as he gazed out at the crystalline blue waters of the Nocen Sea, warm, salty air brushing over his bare skin. It wasn’t the big, grand moments that made up history. It was the small things. It was her arms encircling him from behind, the smell of the ocean, the things in the palace that were Dorian’s. The hours in between, stolen moments and time carved out where it was only skin and love and blood and pleasure-pain. Games and aspirations, dreams and discoveries, new food and learning the language.

It wasn't the big things.

It wasn't winning endless battles, political or otherwise. It was the first time they made a grotesque example of an aging Magister who tried to rise up against the ever-growing Order of the Inquisition.

It wasn’t Dorian’s tireless research bearing fruit and removing the mark from Evie’s hand, but it _was_ the look on her face when it was finally _gone_.

It wasn’t the day they walked the streets of Tevinter without magic flying, without heads of would-be assassins rolling. It was Dorian’s _pride_ to see his homeland begin to emerge anew, remade and restored.

It wasn't receiving a copy of Varric’s latest book, it was the three of them laughing their way through it, taking turns to read aloud and delighting to see themselves exaggerated into outrageous but marketably likeable anti-heroes throughout.

It wasn’t the moment the South fully fell and Leliana, having clung hard and earned Evie’s respect, announced that both Orlais and Ferelden were leaderless and their moment had come at last.

No, it was the first time Cullen addressed Evie in front of a full court, a cavernous room filled with people who had once sneered at them and their Inquisition in its infancy… and calling her, ‘ _My Queen._ _’_

And having the entire hall echo it with reverence that bordered on fear.

It was fucking her in that same hall less than half an hour later.

It was breakfast together and Dorian complaining that his eggs weren’t cooked well enough and Cullen stealing them while Evie laughed and sharpened her jewelled blades.

It was blood between them, it was pain and pleasure and knowing each other inside out. It was being held and pushed and _loved_. It was violence and it was a _terrible_ thing for onlookers to behold but that only made it all the more delicious.

It was the day Evie came to him, wonder and disbelief in her eyes as she kissed him shakily and pressed his hand to her lower abdomen. It was that moment, crystallised. That moment changed everything, changed so much _._

The small things in life meant everything to Cullen Rutherford, King Consort and Commander of the Order of the Inquisition. He cherished them, held them close and combined, they made a happy man where once he’d been anything but.

It was more than enough.

_The End._


End file.
